Sony's CRX 100E 4X/2X/24X CD-R/RW Drive

Emedia Professional, Dec, 1998 by Robert A. Starrett

Used to be, your CD recorder was rather worthless as a CD-ROM drive for anything other than software installation. As CD ROM drives became faster and faster and implemented Constant Angular Velocity (CAV) for increased read speeds up to 24X and 32X, CD recorders muddled along with read speeds of 6X to 12X that were two and maybe three times faster than the write speed. That started changing with the release of the TEAC RS-55S, which recorded at 4X and read at a respectable 12X. The move towards faster read speed in recorders continues with Yamaha's new recorder line offering 16X read speeds, but the clear champion in recorder read speed is Sony's new CRX 100E CD-R/RW drive, which boasts 4X writing, 2X rewriting, and 24X reading.

CONTENTS AND INSTALLATION: 0 TO 24 IN ...

Arriving in the Sony box, along with the drive, is a short but well written "Quick Start" guide, four mounting screws, a three-connector IDE cable, an audio cable for connecting the drive to your sound card, one piece each of CD-R and CD-RW media, a user's guide for the drive, and a 3 I-page software user's guide for the bundled Prassi CD Right! software. Also included is a copy of "NEATO News," an advertising piece boasting a tipped-in CD-ROM with the NEATO Face CD labeling software. No labels or applicator are included, of course, but you will find a coupon offering 24 labels and a NEATO Jr. Applicator for $19.95.

The Sony looks like the typical IDE CD-ROM drive or recorder, with an IDE 40-pin connector, master/slave/cable select jumpers, a power connector, and an audio output on the back of the drive. Also on the back is a two-pin connector marked "Reserved," presumably for digital audio output. The front panel of this tray-loading drive has the typical controls: eject, headphone jack, volume control, activity LED, and an emergency eject hole.

Installation is easy--just plug the drive into an open IDE connector after setting the rear jumpers appropriately to master or slave. The CD Right! software also installs easily and quickly in roughly five seconds--what a pleasure. The entire program is delivered on one floppy disk, and it contains a 766KB setup file. Once expanded and installed, the program consumes only 1.37MB of hard drive space.

ADVANTAGES OF A FAST-READING WRITER

The ability to use a single device for fast data copying, audio extraction and writing, and general CD-ROM access is a boon to users. Many of today's "Department Store" computers have little room for drive expansion, with only one or two drive bays open. Instead of having one fast CD-ROM drive for games, multimedia, and video and another for recording and rewriting, you can now perform all these tasks, with a single device.

One of the most popular applications today is, of course, the production of custom audio CDs. The Sony drive supports this fairly well, extracting audio correctly at 8.5X as determined by the CD Right! extraction test. While a faster extraction speed might be desirable, considering the unit's 24X maximum read speed, most highspeed drives do not fare much better at extraction speeds, except of course the Plextor line, and an 8.5X extraction limit is on par with many 24 to 32X CD-ROM drives. When actually timing extraction, however, the CD Right! numbers may be a little deceiving in Sony's favor. While CD Right! audio extraction tests pegged the Sony extraction at 8.5X, and a Plextor 12/20 Plex at 12.2X, the actual extraction of a four-minute song took 20 seconds on the Sony and 25 on the Plextor, indicating that the Sony may well be ripping audio at 12X or above. This is the best showing to date of audio extraction by a CD recorder other than a Plextor.

CD RIGHT! WRITES RIGHT AS ALWAYS

The bundled CD Right! software--an Editor's Choice winner in its standalone version, as Prassi's CD Right! Plus [See Robert A. Starrett's review, August 1998--Ed.]--will produce a variety of discs. Included in this smorgasbord are, of course CD-ROM and CD-Audio, but also on the plate are bootable CD (El Torito), mixed-mode, CD Extra, and CD-Text.

Sony made a great choice in bundling CD Right! It is probably the cleanest and easiest-to-use CD recording software yet released. The opening screen presents you with four choices: CD Copy (reproduce a CQ by making a physical copy of it), Data CD-ROM (prepare a Data CD by dragging and dropping files into folders), Audio CD Compilation (record a complete audio CD compilation), and CD Ditto DJ (record an audio CD on-the-fly from any sound source). The pull-down menus are short and concise and offer quick and intuitive control over program actions and options. A helpful feature on the Sony CD Right! menu is the "Internet" item on the help menu that links to Prassi's home page and its technical support page, and also links to EMedia Professional's Web site, The CD-Info Center, and the Compact Disc Homepage, three sites largely devoted to compact disc technology

The CD Drive menu shows supported CD-ROM drives and recorders. There is a sub-menu for each device that contains CD Explorer, Eject/Close, and Drive Properties. CD-R/RW drives have another option: erase disc. CD Explorer gives you a quick status of the drive, showing the type of CD, number of tracks or sessions on the disc, length of the disc, and space remaining if the disc is recordable. A large graphical CD, colored appropriately to indicate remaining space and type of disc, is displayed on the left.